1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the invention relate generally to a unified collector structure for multi-bank register file.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional processors collect the operands that are specified by each instruction so that the instruction can be executed. The operands may be stored in a multi-port storage in order to read all of the operands in a single clock cycle. As the maximum number of operands that may be specified by a single instruction increases, the number of ports available in the multi-port storage that are needed to read the operands also increases. Increasing the number of ports increases the size of the multi-port storage and also increases the amount of time needed to complete each read operation.
Accordingly, what is needed are improved methods and systems for collecting operands specified by instructions.